Monday, December 31, 2012

In Japan, at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, temple bells across the country toll 108 times. According to Buddhist teaching, we have 108 earthly desires that cause us suffering – and by listening to the bells toll, we can dispel each desire, one by one.

By imputing to human love features properly reserved for divine love, such as the unconditional and the eternal, we falsify the nature of this most conditional and time-bound and earthy emotion, and force it to labour under intolerable expectations. This divinisation of human love is the latest chapter in humanity’s impulsive quest to steal the powers of its gods, and the longest-running such attempt to reach beyond our humanity. Like the others it must fail; for the moral of these stories is that the limits of the human can be ignored only at terrible cost.

Mercury contamination in big fish such as sharks, swordfish and certain types of tuna is on the rise, and smaller traces of the toxic metal may be enough to cause restricted brain development or other health problems for humans who eat them.
Levels of exposure that are defined as safe by the official limits, are actually having adverse effects. These are not trivial effects, these are significant effects. There does appear to be evidence now, fairly persuasive evidence, that adverse effects occur from normal amounts of seafood consumption.
The European Union recommends pregnant or breastfeeding women not to eat tuna more than twice a week. The US Food and Drug Administration says they should avoid shark, swordfish or king mackerel, although it says some tuna should be included in their diet.
Such guidelines are out of date and stricter rules are needed to avoid the risk that even low levels of mercury could lead to health issues such as impeded brain development in unborn children.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Paradigm shifts don’t happen every other year. They are slow, because even when a new insight is right — dazzlingly right in hindsight — vested interests and other forms of inertia resist its adoption. The same is true for big political discontinuities. They just don’t happen that often.
There are six slow-acting drivers of historical change in our time, as in most of recorded history. A common error is to focus on only one. They are:
1. Technological innovation;
2. The spread of ideas and institutions;
3. The tendency of even good political systems to degenerate;
4. Demographics;
5. Supplies of essential commodities;
6. Climate change.
The hardest question to answer is whether the two dominant powers of the age, America and China, will be able to maintain “co-evolution”. Will it be Chimerica — or “Cool War”? Or blazing hot war?

The pre-eminent international issue is whether we can develop a level of global cooperation that matches the global dimension of our problems.

Our world is more interdependent than ever.

The five great economic and social challenges of our time — all global in nature, all requiring coordinated action, all matters on which the world community has been called upon to act but has failed to do so effectively:

The failure to coordinate global finance

The failure to coordinate global action on climate change

The failure to coordinate growth strategy

The failure to secure a world trade agreement

The failure to deliver the millennium development goals

In five central areas where policy coordination is essential, the world has not moved forward with sufficient force.

Where are the powerful, globally minded voices that can do something about this?

Problems may be increasingly global but politics remains local - some problems are beyond the control of one country’s leadership.

International institutions built in 1945 are now wholly inadequate for the challenges of a global economy.

Without diminishing the vitality of our national identities, we are on the way to creating the first global system of governance.

Egypt was a Muslim country long before there was a religious party. During the three decades of Mubarak’s Washington-backed autocratic rule, the United States shunned the Brotherhood as Islamist fanatics. And now the Brotherhood is all right and it’s the Salafis who are fanatics.
It is time to think again about the relation that the West is often quick to draw between religion and backwardness on the one hand, and secularism and modernity on the other. For the Middle East, as it emerges from Western-back tyranny, becoming “secular” is not necessarily the answer to its problems.

Friday, December 28, 2012

LISBON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Portugal needs to renegotiate its bailout package or risk social problems spinning out of control soon, a U.N. economist dealing with southern Europe told a local newspaper.
The Expresso weekly on Saturday cited Artur Baptista da Silva, coordinator of a group set up by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to monitor debt-ridden southern Europe, as saying Portugal's bailout programme was yielding "very bad results" and some of its terms had to be changed.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) can confirm that Mr Artur Baptista da Silva, who has recently been quoted in media reports as a “UNDP spokesperson in Portugal” on economic issues related to Portugal and Southern Europe, is not, and has never been, a UNDP employee nor an authorized spokesperson for the global development organization. His views are his own and do not reflect the views of the organization.
UNDP is taking action to notify this individual that he is not entitled to speak on behalf of UNDP.

Al Jazeera’s tremendous popularity has also, for better or worse, made it a shaper of public opinion. Its coverage often determines what becomes a story and what does not, as well as how Arab viewers think about issues. Whether in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, or Syria, the stories highlighted and the criticisms aired by guests on Al Jazeera’s news programs have often significantly affected the course of events in the region.
In Palestine, the station’s influence is particularly strong. Recent polling indicates that in the West Bank and Gaza, Al Jazeera is the primary news source for an astounding 53.4 percent of Palestinian viewers. … The result of Al Jazeera’s market dominance is that it has itself become a mover and shaker in Palestinian politics, helping to craft public perceptions and influence the debate. This has obvious implications for the peace process: how Al Jazeera covers the deliberations and the outcome of any negotiated agreement with Israel will fundamentally shape how it is viewed—and, more importantly, whether it is accepted—by the Palestinian public.

China has unveiled tighter Internet controls, including legalising the deletion of posts or pages which are deemed to contain “illegal” information and requiring service providers to hand over such information to the authorities for punishment.
Chinese Internet users already cope with extensive censorship measures, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights and elite politics, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.
The government says tighter monitoring of the Internet is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online, disseminating pornography and spreading panic with unfounded rumours, pointing out that many other countries already have such rules.

A mother’s task is never ending. It doesn’t stop even she’s in the office or anywhere away from home. There’s no day offs or time outs. No amount of money would compensate for the enormous tasks that a mother takes, but the hugs, smiles, kisses of her children are enough to soothe, to lift her up and to refresh her soul. She is like a wonder woman. She takes different roles at different times. She could be a teacher, then a counselor, a nurse, a caregiver, a protector, a playmate or a friend. She would try hard to be what she thinks her children need her to be in a given moment. A mother will do everything even the unimaginable out of her enormous love for her children.

A mother is the role model for all UN staff members. A mother is the one who stays up all night when her child is sick. A mother does anything unconditionally to protect her child. A mother doesn’t ask for overtime pay. A mother doesn’t ask for a promotion either.
… And the UN staff members. Why can’t they do the same … for people worldwide who need their help? Why do they talk about their promotion all the time? Why can’t they just think about the people?

Write. Draw. Take photos. Film. Make music. Sing. Sew. Cook. Paint. Or even just pick up stuffs and make a performance. Art done with heart is never bad. And even if we haven’t seen the result today, we’ll never know, a simple writing or drawing can be very meaningful one day… for art products are records that will give future people a picture of what has happened in this era. And not just simply what has happened, it also comes with a feeling—or at least a perspective—of the creator.
In digital world, these records are called contents. In cultural context, they are called history. We often talk about how our history is filled with violence, sadness, wars and stories of pain. Well… why not help those who have done otherwise, filling history with inspirations? Or even a simple beauty?
I’m sure there are plenty of beauties around the world, even in the countries where we only heard about violence and wars in the news. I think this is where the digital world can help to outweigh the negativities by providing more actual positive contents. And we can help to write the next history of humankind.

The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.
—
We are experiencing the most dangerous revolution in the world history: the revolution of the State against the man. We are experiencing the worst idolatry of all the time: the deification of the state.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been
Feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen,
This is the nearest thing to crazy I have ever known,
I was never crazy on my own…
And now I know that there’s a link between the two,
Being close to craziness and being close to you.

Between now and the 2012 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be ______, would you vote for that person?

Arkansas (Article 19, Section 1): “No person that denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.”Maryland (Article 37): “That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.”Mississippi (Article 14, Section 245): “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.”North Carolina (Article 6, Section 8): “The following persons shall be disqualified from office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”South Carolina (Article 17, Section 4): “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.”Tennessee (Article 9, Section 2): “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.”Texas (Article 1, Section 4): “No religious tests shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall anyone be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”

Japan’s public debt is expected to swell to a record $13.5 trillion as the government finances reconstruction efforts after the March earthquake and tsunami.
Japan’s debt is already the industrialised world’s biggest at around twice its GDP, after years of pump-priming measures by governments trying in vain to arrest a long economic decline.
The public debt is expected to reach 1 quadrillion yen ($13.5 trillion) by the end of this fiscal year to March, up 99.75 trillion yen from a year earlier.
The national debt will inflate as Tokyo plans to issue bonds worth 11.55 trillion yen to finance the reconstruction measures in the disaster-hit northeast, the Yomiuri and NHK public broadcaster said.
The government spending for the year to March is also expected to swell to a record 106.40 trillion as the series of extra budgets will exacerbate the nation’s already tricky fiscal condition.

Mr. Bass explains this anomaly by the high savings rate that has been prevalent among Japanese institutions and individuals. These savings in turn have been reinvested into Japanese bonds, accounting for 95% of Japanese debt to be held domestically.
According to his analysis, though, the situation in Japan is alarmingly changing. First, population growth in Japan peaked in 2004 and since then has been in a steady decline. Second, traditionally, there is no openness to immigration, therefore there will be no outside infusion in the population. Third, the composition of the population itself is biased towards senior citizens — 23% of Japanese are over 65 years of age, compared to 13% in the US and 8% globally. As the dynamics of Japan’s demographics play out, the government of Japan will have to seek out international markets to finance their debt. If they have to pay rates, say, comparable to AAA-rated France, all their income will go to servicing the debt.

Don’t believe proclamations that the password is dead. Even with increasingly sophisticated software programs able to rapidly burn through an endless array of possible character combinations, the password is not only alive, but as important as ever.